Nature, Flower, and Landscape Photographer Based in Iowa

All in all, the Florida Keys trip was fantastic—particularly as an escape from the harsh Midwestern winter. The few notable drawbacks, such as the exorbitant cost of lodging on Key West and the awful process of navigating the spaghetti-like highway system around Miami International Airport, were outshined by everything else. I recommended Dry Tortugas National Park a few posts ago. And I’ll use this opportunity to suggest a few more: (1) Sunset Cove Beach Resort (friendly, campy, wacky, affordable) in Key Largo, (2) Seashell Beach Resort in Marathon (also affordable, laid-back, beautiful oceanfront), (3) Hogfish Bar and Grill (unappetizing name, but their hogfish sandwich is simply amazing), (4) The Key West Butterfly and Nature Conservatory, (5) Robbie's of Islamorada (worth the stop just to see the tarpons), and (6) the beach at Bahia Honda State Park.

The only problem with grouping the photographs from the Florida Keys trip thematically is that I’m left with a bunch of “uncategorized” shots that I like—of a lonesome tree at Anne’s Beach (Islamorada), a group of pilings at Dry Tortugas National Park, a couple of butterflies in Key West, the moon over Smathers Beach during my morning out alone, the ladder rungs of a power pole, a weathered old parking sign next to a lamp, and a couple of kayaks that drifted beneath us while we were atop the Bahia Honda bridge. You can find them all below. Enjoy!

It’s a shame how infrequently I get to visit the ocean. Living in western Iowa, we are about as landlocked as anybody in the United States. We used to visit my grandparents just about every winter in south Texas, where we’d always make our way down to South Padre Island to enjoy the pre–Spring Break calm-before-the-storm, but they’ve recently decided to stay put in Ashland, Nebraska, year-round. It’s awesome for being able to see them whenever we want, but lousy for making our annual visit to the coast. When I really started getting involved in photography, about two years ago, I started paying more and more attention to photo-sharing websites, such as Flickr, and many of my favorite landscape photographs have, of course, been of faraway seascapes at sunrise or sunset, with a dramatic sun-kissed sky and the surf rushing through the frame. Don’t get me wrong; we have amazing sunsets here, but it takes some work to get a nice view of one—typically a good long drive up to one of the lookout points along the western ridge of the spine of loess on which we live. But as for sunrises, forget about it. You might think of the Midwest as a depressingly flat and featureless expanse of cornfields and blue sky, and you’re mostly right, but to the east of our house is a ridge of relatively steep bluffs for miles, so it’s very rare that I get to see an unobstructed view of the sunrise.

This brings me back to my earlier discussion of U.S. Route 1, the highway that joins all the principal Keys. When I started looking at the Florida Keys on the map, there grew in me a romantic little spark as I envisioned all the opportunities for viewing and photographing sunrises, sunsets, moonrises, and moonsets. Seven days spent in the Keys meant 28 times I could watch the sun and moon make their entrances and exits, first ascending from the glittering depths of the Atlantic Ocean and then plunging out of view into the Gulf of Mexico, in an endless, resplendent circuit.

I might sound a little crazy to you at this point, but I assure you, I’m no crazier than the throng of tipsy tourists, street performers, and natives in Key West who congregate on Mallory Square every single evening to cheer, drinks in hand, as the sun drops slowly beneath the horizon. For some, it almost invariably marks the end of another gorgeous day in the Florida Keys, while for many others, it marks the beginning of a long drunken night ahead on Duval Street.

Below is my pictorial tribute to my brief love affair with the hours between dusk and dawn in the Florida Keys. Most of those hours were spent with my amazing wife, while she waited patiently as I stopped time and again to set up my tripod for yet another view and click of the shutter. One such night has become one of my all-time-favorite memories, when we watched invisible stars through my telephoto lens for hours on the beach, the sky as dark as I’ve ever seen it—so black that stars were visible all the way down to the ocean’s horizon line. And one morning, it was just me, a few early joggers, and a great egret watching the chalky, rosy glow intensify over the mangroves east of Key West. I’m glad I had my camera with me.

One of them, Lance Keimig’s Night Photography: Finding your way in the dark, was absolutely superb. I only wish I had read it before our last two trips—first to the Florida Keys and then to the Black Hills, both of which offer excellent opportunities for night shooting. I’ll speak more to this when I have a good series of night photographs to post.

After that, I read Scott Kelby’s The Digital Photography Book, Volume 3. It was fine, though scattered. It’s one of those books that hold a few gems of great advice, hidden throughout in unlikely places. To find them all means that you have to read every word, since they’re never where you expect them to be. The first volume in this series is a must-read for aspiring photographers.

Currently, I’m halfway through Tom Ang’s Digital Photography Essentials. So far, it’s been interesting. It feels like an attempt to provide a one-stop toolkit for all things digital photography, but it might be spread too thin and its intended audience far too broad. Nonetheless, it has given me some food for thought that is relevant to the pictorial theme of this post.

Ang offers two seemingly contradictory pieces of advice. The first is to share (post/print/display) only your “best” work. (In other words, of your thousand vacation pictures, pick only the “best” to share.) The second is to resist the urge to delete photographs that you feel are sub-par, since they might actually be awesome without your realizing it.

This begs the question: Can you identify your “best” work? Even the question assumes some universal standard. And who is best able to apply that standard? The impartial viewer or the biased artist? Accordingly, do you share only the work you consider best? Or do you share your work to find out which is best? Does the distinction even matter?

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These questions have been harassing me while deciding which photographs of Fort Jefferson to include in this post. On the one hand, I am tempted to include only my very favorites—just the three or four shots that evoke a visceral response in me every time I see them. But to do so might risk omitting the photographs that cause a similar reaction in others.

So, as usual, I’ve decided to include both types—the ones I consider my favorites and those I feel have potential. I’ll let you decide which is which.

If you’ve never heard of Dry Tortugas National Park, you’re not alone. It is not like most other national parks, since it is a remote destination requiring a long boat ride or seaplane for access. Most who visit the park embark on a three-hour catamaran ride west from Key West.

In deciding to visit Dry Tortugas, we were mostly just excited to experience such a remote beach and to snorkel around Fort Jefferson, which sits all by its lonesome on the tiny island of Garden Key, one of the islands that make up Dry Tortugas. But, for me, the fort itself ended up becoming the highlight of our visit.

Fort Jefferson is a massive shell of a structure constructed of over sixteen million bricks. From just outside its walls, Fort Jefferson is imposing, much taller and looming than the impression I got from the few aerial pictures of the fort I'd seen. Inside, it is eerily beautiful, with long brick archways and white gravel floors. The windows and embrasures throughout the fort have no glass, screens, or bars—just openings to the sea without. And many seem like they were created with well-aimed cannonballs.

As we walked through the place, in awe, I couldn’t help but imagine the history and secrets kept within its walls. The archways have been stripped almost completely bare of whatever used to be there, exposing just the outlines of old fixtures and implements, only adding to the mysterious air of the place.

Eventually, as you make your through Fort Jefferson, ascending a series of small staircases during the self-guided tour, you end up on the roof, among old cannons and cacti. The view from the top is amazing, affording views of a few nearby and distant islands, as well as the reefs beneath the crystalline water of the surrounding ocean.

Overall, Fort Jefferson was my favorite surprise of the trip, and we spent much more time inside than we had expected. This was just as well, since the water was awfully cold for snorkeling. We got in for a little while, just long enough to say we did it, and spent the rest of the time walking around the moat, eating lunch, and photographing birds.

I’ll leave you with the same advice we got from various sources along the way to Key West. If you have the opportunity to visit Dry Tortugas National Park, take it.

I’m still trying to figure out if my interest in bird photography is born out of a real appreciation for birds or mere laziness, or more likely, some combination thereof. Of all the time I spend shooting, at least half of it is spent in my own backyard, photographing birds.
If you’ve been to our house, specifically out back, you’ve already begun to suspect that Teri might have an unhealthy obsession with feeding birds. But I won’t deny my role as enabler. Indeed, I did build her the biggest bird feeder I’ve ever seen or heard of. It’s nearly eight feet tall and has four separate platforms, as well as hooks and other implements for additional hanging feeders. I call it our bird hotel. It is also completely squirrel- and raccoon-proof, but that’s beside the point.

On clear mornings, just as the sun peeks over our neighbors’ house, the top of the bird hotel is completely illuminated, while the rest of our densely wooded backyard remains in darkness. Birds in the spotlight of the morning sun with only blackness behind them make for some interesting shots. I sometimes spend hours at a time under our deck's gazebo, working on my laptop or reading, camera by my side, raising it every now and then when I notice potentially interesting bird activity on one of the feeders. My favorites are the bluejays, who attack the peanuts in the top platform of the bird hotel, sometimes fitting as many as three in their gullet before returning to the branches above to crack them open.

So if my interest in shooting birds can be described as passive (or circumstantial, or convenient) at home, it’s much more active while traveling with my camera, particularly near the ocean. Serious bird photography is an expensive hobby, usually requiring long, fast, heavy lenses that can cost several thousand dollars. But coastal birds are typically much bigger than nuthatches and red-bellied woodpeckers, so my budget-telephoto-of-choice (Tamron 70-300 VC) does well enough for pelicans and egrets in decent light.

As I’ve said before, my favorite bird subjects are pelicans; luckily for me, they are nearly everywhere in the Keys, and they were beyond cooperative during our visit to Garden Key (Dry Tortugas and Fort Jefferson). We spent at least an hour watching them fish, and in the process, I nearly filled an 8 GB card.

And no discussion about birds in the Florida Keys could possibly be complete without mentioning the chickens in Key West. They’re all over the place, especially near the south shore. I made sure to include a shot of a Key West rooster below. Enjoy.

There is a really good reason you will rarely see photographs of people here. It’s because I consider myself generally lousy at portraiture.
In addition, when you aim your camera at a person, the dynamic instantly becomes much more complicated; more than one interest must be served. By that, I mean that the subject, in addition to the photographer, has a vested interest in the finished product. And I am simply not good enough at portraiture to engage confidently in that relationship.

A landscape or building or animal or insect (or any other nonhuman subject) could not care less about a visual representation of itself. I like that simplicity.

Nonetheless, I found myself raising my camera toward strangers in the Florida Keys, particularly in Key West. Maybe I was seduced by the free-spirited nature of the islands, the pervasive air of burlesque showmanship, the street performers, the tipsy tourists, the light-hearted contest for attention in which almost everyone is participating, either as exhibitionist or spectator.

It started as a sort of candid voyeuristic study with a long lens (Tamron 70-300mm VC) on Sombrero Beach and again on the Dry Tortugas, but, as twilight descended on Duval Street in Key West, I traded the telephoto for the nifty fifty (Canon 50mm 1.8).

On a map, the main swath of the Florida Keys resembles a long, narrow paint-splatter, as if the big brush used to daub Florida was jerked suddenly by an unsteady hand, flinging a thin strand of color from an errant wad of bristles onto the blue canvas. Tiny paint drops, viewable only by squinting, are stippled all around this strand, far into the surrounding blueness. Upon even closer inspection, a tiny thread that spans the principal Keys comes into view; this is U.S. Route 1, also known as the Overseas Highway, and it follows the gradual curve from Key Largo way down to Key West, roughly 110 miles west-southwest.
In late December and early January, while I was trying to decide where Teri and I would travel next, preferably somewhere warm, this highway was the biggest selling point for me.

At the risk of exposing my underlying simplicity, I’ll admit that I fell in love the idea of a linear travel experience. We’d missed so much in Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons as a natural consequence of having relatively little time to explore such an enormous area. Although the vast majority of the lesser-known Keys can be explored only via boat (or helicopter), most of the Keys’ main attractions are nearly impossible to miss from Highway 1. John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park is just a jerk of the wheel from the road at mile marker 102, as is Sombrero Beach (mile marker 54), Bahia Honda State Park (mile marker 36), and all the fascinating freaks of Key West (mile marker 1). And who can beat the weather? Sunny and 77 every day.

This all sounded like a dream respite from the long midwestern winter, so we booked our trip in early January, hopped on a plane one unseasonably warm morning in early February, and were cruising south from Miami in a rental before sunset on an otherwise typical Thursday in winter, with the windows rolled down.

So I’m going to organize things a little differently for my photo retrospective of the Florida Keys trip. Instead of chronologically, I’m going to group my posts by theme. I have a rough idea how these themes will cleave during the upcoming weeks. Broadly, I spent a lot of time shooting birds (mostly pelicans), bridges, the arches of Fort Jefferson, and sunsets/sunrises. I even tried some candid portraiture, since Key West is teeming with intriguing, photogenic weirdos—locals and tourists alike.

I’d also been dying to spend some more quality time with my 110 (10-stop) neutral-density (ND) filter (aka, The Big Stopper [not to be confused with The Hotstepper (wink at Mr. Forman)]) at the ocean. The Big Stopper has the ability to tame the most violent seas, transforming crushing waves into a ghostly sheet of vaporous mist. But alas, it didn’t take long to notice that there is no violence in the surf around the Keys, nary a wave in fact. It was fun nonetheless.

Our first theme will be bridges.

Almost nineteen miles of the Overseas Highway consist of bridges, spanning 42 small and large gaps of open water along the island chain. For someone like me who loves photographing bridges, the Florida Keys is like a mecca. The longest of these bridges is Seven-Mile Bridge, which is among the longest bridges in the world.

Many of these bridges, including the Seven-Mile Bridge, are replacement versions of older driving bridges that were damaged by hurricanes or have otherwise deteriorated in years of sun, salt, and storms. Their charming old predecessors, many of which have been converted to pedestrian bridges, run alongside the newer counterparts.

Bahia Honda Rail Bridge, which was damaged in the Labor Day Hurricane of 1935 and later repurposed as a driving bridge in 1938, is now inaccessible by car or foot, since two of its truss spans have been removed. It’s now a hulking sculpture of rusting steel and crumbling concrete. Teri and I hiked around both Spanish Harbor Key and Bahia Honda Key to get various views of it.

Without further ado, behold (my view of) the bridges of the Florida Keys.